In an effort to make the school more eco-friendly, the eco-school committee, a group of services at OSC comprised of Ecoschools, Recycling and Sustainability, Housing and Habitat, and a PYP-based Eco-schools subset, was formed. One of the biggest projects taken on by this group, in particular my group Housing and Habitat, is a series of garden beds that we will use to sustainably grow to produce. This project required us to seek the assistance of the OSC architect who designed garden beds that would be structurally sound and use sustainable amounts of resources.
On November the 3rd, about 7 of our group went during our service period on Thursday (any more and people would have gotten in the way) to learn the necessary skills to make our weekend building endeavors more efficient.
On the 5th, the Saturday after the instructional brick-laying session, we, as a service convened outside the science rooms, after SAISA practices. This day we laid about 2 layers of bricks; extremely little in comparison to the 5 layers we laid later, in less time no less. This was due to learning how to level the concrete and make sure the concrete was level because the ground we were building on wasn’t.
After a service day the following week, we leveled out our new working ground (outside the KG rooms) and built a plunger for the biogas chamber, which the Recycling and Sustainability group use in particular. The plunger was three components that we found in the design room (and of course asked permission to use); just a cut-open tennis ball, broomstick, and a single screw. After confirming that the plunger worked, we went back to work on the garden beds.
The most recent work day was the 12th of November, again, a Saturday after SAISA practices. This day’s group was small, but in the limited size we were able to work much more efficiently and all picked up skills and knowledge that grew over the 2-hour working period. This was also by far the most productive working day, as we got the most work done, evidenced by the 5 complete layers that we did singlehandedly without any supervision, which were later confirmed to be perfectly done.
The huge progress we as a service have made, in terms of knowledge gained, relationships developed (with the eco-schools group and the Vidyaloka Vidtalaya school), and garden beds constructed has only accelerated, giving evidence that our group’s potential is yet to be reached. It is my personal goal as a leader to continue to develop these things and push our group to be as efficient as possible.